


Alternate Universe

by Manaya_Karyam



Category: Rick and Morty, Steven Universe (Cartoon)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-01-04
Updated: 2016-01-11
Packaged: 2018-05-11 16:54:59
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,362
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5634121
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Manaya_Karyam/pseuds/Manaya_Karyam
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Steven digs something up in his yard.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Yeah, Lion. It _is_  really weird."

Lion prodded the mound of dirt with his nose.

"Welp!" said Steven. "Only one way to find out!"

He raced back to the house and found a shovel, then headed back. He stuck the edge in the mound and started to dig. The dirt came easily. It was pretty clear something had been buried here behind the temple; it could have even been here for centuries. The gems had been in this spot longer than Beach City had. Steven's excitement built as he neared the bottom of the hole, and then vanished when he unearthed a face.

"O-oh my god." An invisible hand grabbed his lungs. He made himself scrape more dirt away from the body.

It had a snub nose and black curly hair.

It had a red shirt with a star.

It was himself.

Steven turned to run back to the house, but his way was blocked - thankfully, not by another self.

"Um, uh, okay kid," said Morty. "Calm down -"

"Who are you?" asked Steven, backing up toward his own grave.

"Woah, woah!" said Morty, rushing forward and pulling Steven back from the edge. Steven noticed the kid's arms were a lot thinner than his.

Morty tried to speak slowly and calmly in the face of Steven's wide, teary eyes. "It's okay," he said. "This has happened to me, too. What, uh, what happened is: your world got really, uh, messed up, like it blew up or something, I didn't really get it - but, uh, I wanted to do a good deed, so I found you real quick and, I brought you to another universe where your Earth was okay, but the other you wasn't, uh, here anymore."

"What?" said Steven. There wasn't anything else to say to that.

"That guy?" said Morty, pointing to the corpse. "You. From a parallel universe."

"You brought a dead me from a different universe??"

"No! From this universe!" said Morty reassuringly.

"What??" said Steven. There wasn't anything else -

  
_"You're_  the one from a different universe," said Morty. "Where everyone _else_  is dead."

The world kaleidescoped. Funny, how even though Steven still didn't get half of what he was hearing, there was enough there to realize things were changing forever -

He couldn't summon the breath to ask the next question.

But Morty continued, "And here was a world, perfectly fine, except, you personally were gone."

_"Why??"_

"You... well, you fell off the porch onto some rocks, I think."

Steven wanted to say that didn't count as a 'why'. It couldn't be so random or stupid. But the event was playing, unbidden, in his imagination, and it felt horribly possible - the tip too far over the balcony, the hit too hard on the ground... He resolved never to be careless up there again.

He was supposed to have been something. Grown up to do something. That Steven in the hole was supposed to have lived the rest of his life, what... what went wrong? What cosmic being screwed up?

"But only I screwed up," Steven whispered.

"Hey, uh... don't get down on yourself," said Morty awkwardly. "I mean... you're the one who _didn't_  fall off, so you _didn't_ screw up. So, like... sucks to be that guy, right?"

"I am that guy!" Steven sobbed, eyes welling up.

"Oh - ah, jeez -"

"Why don't I remember this stuff?"

"You were asleep. It all happened last night. You, um, found the grave pretty fast, huh?"

Lion whined, reminding them of his presence. He was staring into the grave dejectedly, pawing the ground.

"Lion! Don't... don't worry, buddy! That's not me!" said Steven, realizing as he said it that it felt like lying. "Come on," he said, "we gotta get you away from here..."

As he approached his friend, Lion seemed to sense the whirlwind of frightened confusion in Steven's head, and shied away.

"Co-come on, Lion," Steven said shakily. "We have to go now." Lion reluctantly followed him away. Morty kicked enough dirt back on to hide the body.

"Hey," he said, catching up. "You know what, um, what I think is good to forget this kinda stuff? Um, how 'bout we watch tv? Uh, I'm stuck here until my grandpa finds me. Do you mind if I use your tv?"

Steven walked through his house in a daze, looking as if through glass. Not his own world. But everything the same. In his room, Morty sat against the bed and casually turned on the tv. Steven stood in the doorway.

"The other world blew up?" he asked.

"Yeah. I don't know what that was about. Someone was cooking a monster inside or somethin', uh, hopefully that isn't going on with this one..."

"And the other everyone, the other Garnet, Amethyst, and Pearl, and Dad and... Connie?" he squeaked, derailed from his last word by the awful thought.

"But listen," said Morty quickly, "you have the same ones in this world, right? It's all the same. Nothing even happened."

Steven went and sat down. Ducktective played on the screen. Steven's stomach was clenched tightly.

His thoughts twisted.

Finally he said, "alternate universes?"

"Infinite."

"A universe where the world ended?"

"A universe where hamsters live in butts..."

_"A universe where I wasn't born? A universe where the town was destroyed by that monster? A universe where Lapis never escaped the mirror? A universe where Sadie was killed by that invisible thing?"_

"A universe where Hitler cured cancer!" Morty snapped. "The answer is 'don't think about it', okay?"

"That didn't sound like you," said Steven.

Morty looked away.

"I can't not think about it," said Steven tearfully. "How do you?"

Morty just watched the cartoon colors play across the screen.

When the crystal gems arrived on the warp pad, Steven ran down to meet them, gave them all hugs, and asked what they did and how dangerous it was.

"Oh, very dangerous," Garnet grinned.

Steven looked horrified.

"Don't worry, Steven. We all came back just fine."

"With just some minor brain damage," said Amethyst, crossing her eyes for comedic effect.

Steven stood and watched as they left the room for various pursuits.

"A universe where they didn't come back?" he said quietly.

"I guess," said Morty, up in the loft.

"How do you deal with that?" said Steven, trying to convey the crumpled, inky mess of his mental canvas, that seemed to be channeling in all fidelity the feelings of that very real other Steven, who would wait for days, alongside his dad, and maybe finally understand, and whose life would shift, all out of his control, into something-else, that had three (four?) holes punched in it, forever.

His stomach was clenched tightly, still.

And Morty wasn't answering.

He went to find someone else.

"Pearl... if, hypothetically..."

She listened, not taking him very seriously.

"Well, Steven, I really doubt things really work like that. But I think even if they did, it wouldn't change very much."

That genuinely shocked him. "How?"

"Well, think about it. In real life, we plan and spend our energy thinking about what's most likely to happen, even though unlikely things still happen on occasion. That's just the sensible way to do it. So even if we say 'this thing happens in 9 out of 10 universes', instead of 'this thing is 90% likely to happen', we should still care most about the normal things, not the really rare things."

  
_But,_  Steven wanted to say, _that other Steven has still_ actually _lost his moms. And this other Steven is still_ actually _dead. How can I ignore that?_  


"Steven," said Pearl, "who's this strange teenager up in your room?"

Steven dealt with that by answering vaguely. He watched himself act normally while his insides heaved. He wondered if his ordinary manner was like a robotic exoskeleton, doing what it was programmed to do no matter what was happening inside.

But one thing was clear. This was all starting to feel very... _familiar._  


On the way out to a secluded spot, he went over the last time in his memory. He'd felt very much the same as he did now, though at that time he'd called it 'feeling trapped' and now it was more a sense of horror. And at that time, he thought he had known what had to be done. But it had made him feel horrible. And the one counterintuitive thing that had made it all better...

He sat at the edge of the cliff - then scooted a bit farther from the edge - and called Connie.

He didn't use 'hypothetically'; he told her what had happened.

"That's insane," said Connie. Then, "no, sorry, not like _you're_ insane! I mean, I believe you! I mean, that's a crazy thing to happen."

"Tell me about it," Steven croaked.

"It's unbelievable. I mean, that many other universes? I can't wrap my head around it."

"Yeah," Steven murmured.

"Well..." said Connie after a while, "I guess Pearl's right."

"...Really?"

"Steven... this is how I deal with things. First, I imagine it's a year later, and I've somehow already learned how to cope with whatever it is. If I had to guess how that future me learned to cope, what would I guess? It's just a useful thought exercise."

"Um..." _In a year, a bunch of me's will be dead,_  Steven thought. Then he remembered he should practice full disclosure. "In a year, a bunch of me's will be dead," he said shakily. "Just in some random way or another."

"And that's awful," said Connie. "But I guess... if there was a version of me who wasn't afraid of that, it would be because she was focusing on the you's who wouldn't be dead. And there are a lot more of them. So many more."

"That just makes me more scared," said Steven. "Whats going to happen to them?"

"What's going to happen to you?" returned Connie. "The you, personally, who you experience? Something bad could always happen, but it's really unlikely! So you don't worry about it! You're Steven, you're the best at not worrying about it!"

"No I'm not!"

Pause.

"Yeah, you're right," said Connie shamefully. "I guess that's just how you seem on the outside. But I should know you better."

"It feels like..." said Steven. "It feels like I'm about to fall off this cliff, right now. Because it's possible that the rocks are slightly loose, even this far in. It's super unlikely for the loose rocks to all line up in the wrong way, but there's gotta be _some_  me out there for whom it really happens! He's falling right now! He's... it actually happened! He... Connie, I'm so scared!"

"Steven," she said gently. "This... is insane. Whatever it feels like... you know that in one year, you'll have found some way to cope. Nobody lives like this. So whatever it feels like, there must be some way around it."

"Or maybe," said Steven, "nobody lives like this because they don't know about other worlds. And for anyone who does know... there's no going back."


	2. Splinter Dance

Google

parallel universes

other universes

many worlds theory quantum mechanics

are other universes real

dealing with many worlds

how do i come to terms with parallel universes

how to stop believing something

how to change my mind

 

Life was chaos.

You wouldn't think so, to look at it. Gems moved about the temple at a casual pace. Steven sat around, not doing anything urgent. And yet in a parallel temple, a rock had just fallen and smashed someone's gem into dust.

Amethyst?

Pearl?

Garnet?

Or, either Ruby or Sapphire, individually?

Everything happened, somewhere out there.

And the Steven in that world had been thinking exactly the same things as this one - had been essentially the same person. _But he's in the tragic reality, and I'm okay._  


Why?

"Life is chaos," Morty said. "You don't need to hop realities to see it. You, you get a whole universe of beings - or, heck, man, you get just a whole Earth - just a whole seven billion or whatevs - how many of those 'super unlikely tragedies' do you think just happened in your own reality?"

"That doesn't make me feel better," said Steven.

"Come on, man. What I mean is you ignore that stuff everyday. So what does a difference in scale matter?"

"Now I just feel like a jerk," Steven whined.

He wanted to disappear.

_Thanks a lot, Morty. For saving me from the end of the world. But if it's all the same to you, maybe you could just drop me off back home - right in the cold vacuum of space -_

He realized what he was thinking and started to cry.

_How to stop believing something._

_How to change my mind._

As if believing it was the problem. No, the problem was that life was chaos. You couldn't get away from what's true.

And still, a bajillion Stevens might continue to live, perfectly tragedy-free, except for the tragedy of knowing all of this...

...but what would be the point? What could he ever feel comfortable with? Depend on? Strive for?

"Morty... how do you think like that, and feel okay?"

"Haha, wow, uh... I didn't know this was gonna be, like, big time philosophy hour. Philosophy time with star boy."

"You didn't think so, when you brought me to a different universe and let me dig up a dead me?" Steven was doing an angry eyebrows face. "Morty, when you think about some other Morty, who cares about his family just like you -"

"Well I _don't_  think about that!" snapped Morty. "That's kind of the point! Or, you know what, I don't have to care about that even if I do. He's not me."

"You learned to not care -" And he imagined it. A future where Steven, to save his sanity, just learned to _not care._  


...And, of all the scary things that could happen, it was hard to believe there was any universe at all where that particular thing could happen. Or at least, it was a very different Steven for whom it happened; one who had been born a different person than he had.

"And," he asked, "not caring comes naturally for you?"

"Guess I learned it from my grandpa."

"He kinda sounds like a not nice person."

Morty didn't respond.

"Waaaaaaah!" cried the breakfast foods on the tv.

"Okay, that's all," said Steven, sensing the tension despite all the tension already in his body. He flopped down on his bed. He numbed his mind with an addictive phone game and eventually went half-asleep.

Then Pearl was calling for him.

"Steven, come on! Are you awake? We've got a monster on our hands!"

It looked like a star. Covered with bubbling black sap. With tentacles. That ended in blades.

He exited the temple to find it right on the beach, hovering and flailing. Garnet ran up, jumped, aimed a fist, and was batted aside by the flat of a tentacle. She faffed down onto the sand, except that Steven was imagining another world where the blade sliced through her and she _poofed,_ and only the two gems hit the ground, and then another where it smashed right into one hand and broke a gem, and maybe either Ruby or Sapphire tumbled through the air in horror as the form of Garnet shrank down and left only her, Ruby or Sapphire, for the last time.

"Steven!"

He was spacing out! What kind of teammate was he! Pearl had thrown her spear, it had been knocked away, and now Steven drew his shield and ran to block the blade rushing toward her -

Clash! He succeeded just in time, the way it always somehow happened. And he imagined a hundred other Stevens, transparent onion-skins over his own reality - _failing to summon the shield and being stabbed - failing to get there in time - or tripping - or not noticing, and Pearl being stabbed - sliced - the hard friction of the knife on her gem, pressing down on her head, pushing her to her knees until it cracked in half -_  


"Thank you, Steven!"

The tentacle swiveled and came back, and he parried it away again on instinct. Pearl pulled a new spear from her head and stepped past him, and vaulted over the railing down to the beach. Eyes stinging, stomach tight and terrified, Steven joined her without a second thought - not over the railing, but using the stairs.

Amethyst had nabbed a tentacle with her whip. She was pulling it down, like a fisherman with an obstinate catch. He raced to her and parried the blades coming at her from the sides. And somewhere, more distantly, he knew he should continue to fear the alternate outcomes - _his aim slightly too slow or inaccurate, and a knife slicing into his chest, ripping the yellow star apart - or it gets Amethyst and, you know, the same things he already worried about for the other gems -_  but that worry was drowned in his adrenaline, and it couldn't sit next to his determination, his conviction that he would prevent all harm to his family by his own hand. The conviction he had already had, back when the universe was singular.

He smacked away another blade. For this Steven, at least - for these Crystal Gems - things were going okay! And then the rough hand of anxiety grabbed and squeezed that hope! _"But you didn't solve the problem! Everything is still awful!"_  Struggling against his fear, Steven struggled against the monster! And which battle was easier? He -

  
_SQUELCH._ The monster crumpled up tiny and disappeared. It imploded.

They waited for the gem to drop. It didn't.

Back on the porch, an old man with star hair was holding out a gun that made things implode. Morty was also there.

"You're - urp - welcome," said Rick. "C'mon, Morty, let's blow this shitsicle joint. This place looks too fuzzy-wuzzy for my taste. Looks like some kinda Saturday morning playtime bullshit. C'mon, Morty."

Pearl covered Steven's ears, much too late.

"Who _are_  you?" said Amethyst to the man on the porch.

"This, uh, this is my grandpa, Rick," said Morty.

"Who are _you?"_  said Amethyst to the boy on the porch.

"I, uh, told you," said Steven hesitantly. "One of the teenagers I know, who was hanging out here."

"Hah! Nice job bullshitting the parentals, star boy. Or whatever these - urp - are. Yeesh. C-C'mon, Morty."

Morty was silent. Rick opened a green glistening portal and stepped through.

And - remembering the jagged reverb of the blades off his shield - and Morty's silence about his jerkface grandpa - and the concept of not caring, and the seething weight of infinite sadness on his back, which was the exorbitant price of the essential product that was caring -

"Morty," Steven called out. He wouldn't have said it just to himself, he wouldn't have believed it. But to Morty, as the guy left forever, he had to try to say it. (And in another reality, Steven probably left it too late, and lost his chance to say it...)

"Chaos," he started. "I... I get that. Life is chaotic. And even more... I can't take responsibility for everyone. Not in some kind of multiverse, but not even on the planet Earth, either. And -" he sniffled "- some people are gonna get hurt, and..." and he was rambling, but there had to be a point here,  _say your truth,_  "but I guess I won't stop fighting for what I can, Morty. So... if my friends are in danger right in front of me, I'm not gonna stop fighting. It isn't even a choice. And... you know what? Not only that, but every single Steven out there is gonna keep fighting just the same. And it won't be enough, but..." His words dried up. "It's something...?"

Morty nodded, like, _that's interesting_. "See ya, Steven," he said, and went through the portal, which closed behind him.

  
_And it won't be enough, but... maybe that's not the only way to measure things?_  (And maybe an alternate Steven thought to say that in time, and said it...)

Later, Steven lay on his bed, continuing to feel awful.

But he had said it. He wouldn't forget it.

Maybe he could make it mean something.


End file.
